Shockingly enough, this song and video was actually considered to be controversial in 1994. Today, we just wish that Tom Petty was still here to roll another joint.
This video was directed by Phil Joanu, who directed several videos for both Tom Petty and U2. He also directed films like State of Grace and Gridiron Gang.
Enjoy!
Continuing our series of greatest guitar solo series, I present “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by The Beatles.
The song was written by George Harrison and was composed at a time after the band had just returned from a trip and stay in India to study Transcendental Meditation. Harrison, inspired by his stay in India, re-discovered his passion for the guitar and began to write songs with it as his main instrument. Thus begins an era of The Beatles and George Harrison as a maturing songwriter than made a huge contribution to the band becoming more than just the global rock phenomena pre-1968 and one where the group began to release songs and albums that reflected their new world views.
Yet, as great as the song has become since its release on November 22, 1968, it’s also well-remembered as the song that began a series of collaborations between George Harrison and Eric Clapton (a close friend) who plays lead guitar on the song. It is Clapton’s lead guitar work on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” that has mesmerized listeners throughout the decades.
Clapton plays two guitar solos, the first occurring during first bridge section of the song, and the second the song’s outro. Both solos accentuates and focuses on the song’s lyrical tradition styling where the musical instrument provides the emotions that propel the song.
The outro guitar solo has also reached a new level of immortality in 2004 when Harrison was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The collaboration of artists that included Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, Marc Mann, Dhani Harrison, Prince, Steve Ferrone, Scott Thurston, Jeff Young, and Jim Capaldi. It was Prince’s extended performance of the outro solo that’s become legendary.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don’t know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
[guitar solo]
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No-one alerted you
I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all……
Still my guitar gently weeps
I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don’t know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No-one alerted you
I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all……
Still my guitar gently weeps
[guitar solo]
Great Guitar Solos Series
Today’s music video of the day is the video for A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me) by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty and the band spend much of the song performing in the shadows of his heartbreak but otherwise, this is a simple video. Sometimes, a video doesn’t need a lot of gimmicks to be effective.
This song was one of Tom Petty’s most underrated, only reaching 79 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. It deserved to go higher.
Enjoy!
The 25th music video to play on MTV on August 1st, 1980 was this performance clip, featuring Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, and the Heartbreakers performing Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around. MTV would play the video a total of four times during its first day of broadcast.
Enjoy!
The First Videos Shown on MTV:
This was one of Tom Petty’s final songs and it’s also one of his best. This somber song features Petty looking back on his own past and forgiving his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship while he was growing up.
The video was shot on location in Los Angeles and simply features a man driving while thinking about the past. Of course, in the video, that man is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, who grew up not in Los Angeles but in Wales. However, Hopkins has spoken of having a similarly difficult childhood to Petty’s.
This video was directed by actor Sean Penn, who was a friend of Petty’s, and Samuel Bayer. Bayer has directed several music videos but will probably always be best known for directing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Enjoy!
Believe it or not, this song was considered to be controversial when it was first released. Even in 1994, there were apparently people shocked to discover that some musicians not only smoked weed but openly admitted it. The song actually played on some radio stations with the words “roll’ and “joint” blanked out. On MTV, the lyric was changed to “let’s hit another joint.” I’m not sure how “let’s hit another joint” is somehow less pro-weed than “let’s roll another joint.”
This video was directed by Phil Joanou, who also did several videos for U2 and who directed the cult classic, Three O’Clock High. The woman in the video is Raven Snow, who is apparently best known for appearing in several episodes of Red Shoe Diaries. Remember Red Shoe Diaries?
I miss Tom Petty. Don’t we all?
“I wrote that in a little apartment I had in Encino. It was right next to the freeway and the cars sometimes sounded like waves from the ocean, which is why there’s the line about the waves crashing on the beach. The words just came tumbling out very quickly – and it was the start of writing about people who are longing for something else in life, something better than they have.”
— Tom Petty on American Girl
Because it’s the 4th of July, I wanted to share the music video for Tom Petty’s American Girl but it turns out that there never was an official video for American Girl. The song came out before the launch of MTV and, strangely enough, it was never as big a hit in the United States than it was in the UK.
I was, however, able to find footage of Tom Petty performing the song on Fridays. Fridays was a rip-off of Saturday Night Live. It aired live with a regular ensemble and it also featured a weekly musical guest. The only real difference between it and SNL was that Fridays aired on …. you guessed it, Friday night. It never escaped the shadow of Saturday Night Live, though it did receive some attention when guest host Andy Kaufman got into an on-air brawl with Michael Richards. (Apparently, it was a staged fight though, as was often the case with Kaufman, few people realized it.) Today, Fridays is best known for featuring several performers — Richards, Larry David, Bruce Mahler, and others — who were later appeared on Seinfeld.
This performance above is from the June 6th, 1980 episode of Fridays. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed Shadow of a Doubt and American Girl on the episode. According to Wikipedia, that episode also featured sketches with names like “Johannes the Friday’s Parakeet Needs Marijuana Seeds” and “Prostitution Debate with Pastor Babbitt.”
American Girl, incidentally, was originally recorded on July 4th, 1976. Today is its 44th birthday.
Enjoy!
In an era of throbbing disco beats, ponderous prog rock, and angry loud punk, Tom Petty’s rootsy, guitar-jangling sound was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the late 70’s radio airwaves. Petty was a Southern boy, but didn’t fit the ‘Southern Rock’ mode of the Allman Brothers or Marshall Tucker. Instead, he and his band The Heartbreakers were influenced by the stylings of The Beatles and The Byrds, crafting tight-knit pop tunes for the ages.
The Florida-born Petty was an artsy type of kid, an outsider in a world of machismo. He met his idol Elvis Presley when The King was making the 1961 film FOLLOW THAT DREAM on location, and three years later, when The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, Tom knew what he wanted to do with his life. By age 17, he’d dropped out of high school, and three years later started Mudcrutch, a…
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Words fail me right now.
Rest in peace, Tom Petty.
Thank you for the music.
Update, 4:39 pm — Now, CBS, which was the first outlet to report that Tom Petty had died, have backtracked their report. He’s on life support but apparently, he’s still hanging on.
4:44 pm — The LAPD has apologized for “inadvertently providing false information.”
12:25 am — Sadly, Tom Petty’s passing has now been confirmed.
Through the Shattered Lens 